A funny thing happened this week which I would like to share with you – a seagull crashed landed in our garden. You might not think that was funny but it was raining cats and dogs at the time and my brave cat ran as though her life depended on it straight in the house and hide behind my chair.

When the weather had abated a bit, my brave hubby sallied forth to deal with the situation. It turned out that the poor thing was wrapped in fishing line. Lola (the cat) will usually take on anything which lands in our garden, but I think that she found a fully grown herring gull a bit above her pay grade as household cat.

My hubby emerged from the garden soaking wet with a bedraggled gull held at arm’s length and not in a very good mood (both the hubby and the gull had battle scars). The gull was deposited in the greenhouse with food, and I was told abruptly to phone the RSPB. By this time it was well into the evening.

Did you know we don’t have a branch of RSPB on the island? I had to phone the out of hours one in Hampshire. They were very helpful and took the details and then they dropped the bombshell and said they could not come out that evening as it was not a life threatening emergency. They would pass it on to RSPCA in Rookley who would attend the following morning.

This left us with an irate lodger trying to peck his way out of the greenhouse, a cat scared to death and an unhappy hubby nursing his cuts and bruises. What an evening!

The following morning, a man from the RSPCA arrived at our door. He expected to find a dead bird – but no – our guest was alive and in a very bad mood. You think that he would grateful for a free nights B&B!

Because the fishing line was severely cutting off the blood supply to both legs, he was obliged to remove it while still here. I take my hat off to him, that bird put up one hell of a fight! But eventually he cut the last piece off. So the RSPCA man decided that the gull needed a check-up (good luck with that) and duly took him to Rookley.

This is where I get on my high horse. How can people be so thoughtless as to leave fishing lines just lying about? Many birds and animals become wrapped in it and die as a result. Our wildlife is precious to this island and we should try and preserve as much of it as possible. That’s it! Rant over! Well now, I feel a lot better.